Brette Borow is the President and Founder of Girls Guide To, the “ladies only” guide to life, and spends most of her days engaging with the community’s over 140,000 members.

There are over 56 million women using Facebook in the United States, and for marketers this means one very important thing –- if you have a brand, product or company that targets women, Facebook is the place to be.

Unfortunately, unless you’re a brand that every woman knows or loves, then just being on Facebook is not enough. Facebook has done a great job of giving marketers a powerful tool with its Pages product, but like most things in life, it comes down to execution. To help, here is a list of 10 tips for marketing to women on Facebook.

The first thing I tell marketers, whether it’s a Fortune 500 company or a friend launching an online jewelry site, is to remember that women are bombarded by marketing messages all day, every day. On the surface, Facebook is no different than the “real world” –- constantly being pitched to and spammed is annoying. The main difference between Facebook and the “real world” is that on Facebook, fans can “hide” your marketing message much more easily than they can avoid the billboard on the way to work. As a result, you are going to have to try your best to connect with them. On Facebook, quality rises to the top more often than not.

So quality rises to the top, but what does that mean? For starters lets take a look at what Dove has done on Facebook. Dove is one of the few brands that seems to grasp the fact that on Facebook, content really is queen and that brands must deliberately create an emotional connection with their fans. This is a great strategy to emulate because in order to reach women on Facebook, you are going to have to connect with them by providing content that women can relate to. Something that ignites a reaction like “Wow, that’s me!” will encourage women not only to respond to your messages, but actually remember them. Making an emotional connection is one of the best ways to motivate women to use your brand or service.

Utility should be synonymous with your brand. It will allow you to create a relationship with your fans. Create a series of posts that your fans can look forward to on a daily or weekly basis — something they will feel a real connection to and will teach them something they can use. If you run a fashion web site, for example, provide a piece of advice from a designer every Friday –- it will make it much harder for your fans to block your updates if they have something to look forward to.

Women like to be heard. Stand out from the crowd and engage us. By creating a two-way conversation, you are personalizing your brand and making it one that can be trusted.

Your Facebook Page is also one of the best “focus groups” on the web. Not sure if you should add a product to your line? Trying to decide which functionality to add to your iPhone app? Just ask your fans. A great example of this type of interaction is H&M. They are constantly asking their fans what pieces they want to buy, what they would pay and what they want H&M to carry. This type of feedback is invaluable and brings the fan into the overall experience. Women can share their thoughts, and you can enjoy the free insight you’re receiving straight from your target consumer.

Not only do we like to be heard, we also like to know we’re actually being listened to. If a fan posts a question on your page, answer it. If she compliments your brand, thank her. And if she complains about it, address her concerns and reassure her that you’re working on fixing it. This is a great way to build trust and showcase the great customer service and support your company offers.

If you’re doing a giveaway, running a great promotion or launching a new product, you need to keep the process simple. Cosmopolitan Magazine, for example, constantly offers giveaways and discounts, but always do it in a clear and simple way. The lesson here is not to overthink your promotions. Your fans will look forward to the next time your brand has something new and exciting to share, as long as taking advantage of the offer is relatively pain-free.

Unlike Twitter, where most people are following a plethora of people and information is passing by at lightning speed, Facebook has a tendency to draw attention to “spammy posts.” Facebook users do not want to see the same message posted multiple times in their feed. So if you’re promoting something through your Fan Page be sure to reword it and provide additional value before you post it a second time.

You need to remember that women tend to be the CPOs (Chief Purchasing Officers) in their households, and that they tend to ask friends for advice about brands and products. Women are more than happy to share a good deal when they find one.

The Limited was one of the first brands to really grasp that Facebook represents a huge opportunity to reach their CPOs. They have started to embed actual retail offers into their newsfeed. But unlike other brands, they do not drive their traffic off of Facebook. Instead, their feed stories open up into widgets on Facebook that can handle the entire transaction right there. This clever use of technology is a prime example of ways that brands need to think outside of the box to reach their social shoppers.

Women also tend not to be shy about sharing their distaste about a brand or product or talking about their poor experience, so never take advantage of your fans. The last thing you want is your target demographic badmouthing your brand on a viral platform like Facebook.

Keep your offers and processes clear and honest and always respond to feedback and criticism.

Fill your fans in on the positive but don’t be afraid to address the negative. As we all know, the web is transparent. Allow it to work in your favor. Just launched a new Android app? Let your fans be the first to know. Just got nominated for 6 Grammy Awards and want to share it with the world? Then do what Lady Gaga did and let your fans know the moment you find out. In a transparent world, you can share your news with your fans, and the sooner the better.

Last but not least, if your company is experiencing difficulties like supply shortage or a down web site, be the first to let your customers know. Be upfront and straightforward. Your honesty will speak volumes about your brand.

via 10 Musts for Marketing to Women on Facebook.

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The FMCG giants are moving away from sites created on a campaign-by-campaign basis in favour of investment in existing communities. While both companies will continue to create campaign sites for certain brands in the immediate future, they have said the long-term future lies with social media on platforms populated by their target consumers.

Coca-Cola will position its official Facebook and YouTube pages as the lead online channels for upcoming international activity for its Coke Zero and Fanta brands, new media age understands.

Prinz Pinakatt, the Coca-Cola Company’s interactive marketing manager for Europe, said, “In some cases some of our campaigns won’t need a coke.com-hosted site. In most cases these will still exist as it’s the most obvious destination for a consumer, but it might only be a page linking to YouTube encouraging people to join the community there.

“We would like to place our activities and brands where people are, rather than dragging them to our platform,” Pinakatt added.

Unilever is also abandoning campaign sites in favour of long-term community engagement platforms.

Cheryl Calverley, Unilever UK’s senior global manager for Axe Skin, said, “You’ll see fewer brands creating a site for one campaign and then throwing it away. Certainly we won’t do that at Unilever any more.

“It’s natural online to go to the place where people are already consuming media,” she added. “It’s less effort to ask people to leave an environment they’re already in.”

The shift has caused some digital media specialists to question the long-term future of campaign sites.

Jo Lyall, head of invention and digital at Mindshare, said, “The challenge is understanding what a campaign site is now and how you get everyone into the mindset of creating a continuous stream of content.”

Julie Jeancolas, digital board director at media agency Carat, said, “It’s not always cost effective to produce a site every time you launch a campaign. What we tell clients is to create something ongoing that has scope for community.”

Unilever’s Calverley said the shift in focus won’t mean less work for creative agencies, more that their output will evolve.

“The digital agencies that have a proper planning arm and think very seriously about the consumer’s journey through the digital space will be those that will benefit,” she said. “The battle is now to understand how to continue engagement with a consumer outside of a campaign site I’ve driven them too. It’s a much more complicated planning challenge.”

via Cover story: Coke drops campaign sites in favour of social media | News | New Media Age.

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Some advertisers, like Pepsi, are pouring marketing dollars into homegrown projects rather than flashy bets like the SuperBowl. But even so, online video ad dollars will grow significantly this year according to the most recent figures from eMarketer–they’ll be buoyed by pre-roll ads. Keep an eye on new video ad formats that will emerge this year thanks in part to fresh evidence of the effectiveness of tailored and interactive online video spots. For more details, watch this week’s New Media Minute.

Editor’s Note:  Daisy’s New Media Minute is produced and sponsored separately from Beet.TV.  We are pleased to publish her segment regularly here.  AP

UPDATE: The Nielsen Company announced today the overall online video usage and top online brands ranked by video streams for December 2009.  Unique viewers, total streams, streams per viewer, and time per viewer were up, led by a 13% growth in time spent viewing per viewer in December.

For more December online video data, visit Nielsen Wire.

via Beet.TV: Social Media Spending to Hit $1.3 Billion This Year.

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1. Pay Attention to the Metrics
You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Chief Marketing Officers are going to pay more attention to metrics and tie in social media more directly to overall business goals, not just web-related goals. When starting up new project agree on what the metrics should be and what goals are appropriate.

2. Scale Good Habits
As you grow, make sure you match your structure, policy and guidelines to your organization size. What works with 2 people won’t work with 20 people. All in all your structure should encourage good habits. Your entire team should be motivated to respond quickly, post consistently and talk like a human. Speaking of policies and rules…

3. Have Rules, But Trust People
As your social media strategy matures, you’ll add in more rules and guidelines. However, you can’t have a rule for every situation. You need to trust your team. Lead by example, don’t manage with rulebook.

4. Creativity & Personality Trump Big Budget
Social media is definitely one of those areas in life where more money doesn’t always win. Two of the most powerful ingredients in social media are creativity and personality. They are the key to having a viral message and to being a trusted resource. They are also essential to discovering useful strategies and tactics. You can’t be afraid to try something new or go against the grain.

5. Listen Listen Listen
Don’t focus so much on you and your message. Put that farther down on your To Do List. Focus first on your customers. Hear what they are saying, see what they’re up to. Once you’ve been able to connect, and figure them out, then see how you can help.

via 5 Social Media Secrets for 2010 – SlideShare Newsletter.

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Google’s AdSense is brilliant in that it very simply provides relevant contextual ads across millions of web pages. But what if you make that process a little less automated and provide ads that are endorsed by the creators of those web pages? So instead of an algorithmically matched text ad appearing next to a blog post about the same topic, readers see an on-topic product recommendation by a writer they trust. It’s something that could get very messy very fast — and it already has, in the form of outrage over paid tweeting and blog posts with undisclosed sponsorships.

San Francisco-based MyLikes.com is wading into those waters with full awareness of the potential pitfalls, but a hope that it can evade them and in doing so steal AdSense’s $6-$7 billion per year in revenue. The startup comes from two former Googlers, including the former tech lead for AdSense, Arvind Sundararajan. He and wife Bindu Reddy, the former head of product management for Google Apps, have co-founded the company, are its only employees, and have invested into it $200,000 of their own money.

So why not start the same product within Google? “Doing stuff inside the company always takes longer,” Reddy said in a phone interview. And what about taking outside investment? Well, for one, Reddy and Sundararajan didn’t have to — but as she explained, “Getting capital right now would be similar to Google — you’d have to answer to someone.”

In an effort to offer an endorsement service that’s decidedly not scammy, MyLikes started out by building a consumer product, Likaholix (see Om’s write-up from March). “We were afraid that if we started an ad product with no consumer product, people would not be genuine,” said Reddy. Now, the company is extending its network of 30,000 members and 300,000 “likes” as seeds for its sponsorship program.

On the new site, which launches Wednesday morning, each user has a profile, and earns an “influence score” based on their presence on Twitter and their blogs. They can post one ad every two days on their sites, which they write in their own words. The ads either appear in a post that discloses the relationship with the sponsor or in an AdSense-like unit. They receive 20-60 cents per click. MyLikes (which was formerly called Likes.com, but switched names after Like.com complained about its trademark) currently doesn’t take a cut, but will at a later date from for-profit users (users also have the choice of donating their proceeds to charity).

MyLikes and its affiliate ads face competition from the likes of Ad.ly and Sponsored Tweets. Federated Media also does similar work on what it calls “conversational marketing” with larger publishers. My concern would be that as such services become more widespread, lifestyle blogging will be so littered with product placements that it will be polluted and boring. (In some cases, that’s already happening.)

Reddy said that she thinks MyLike’s model of full disclosure (which is what the FTC now requires) and performance-based payments will incentivise effective ads. Plus, bloggers will be limited to one ad every two days.

So if you can only run one ad every two days at a 20-60 cents CPC, is there actually a real business here for bloggers/tweeters, and eventually MyLikes the company? Reddy thinks so, because as compared to an impersonal AdSense placement or a banner, “our ad is going to be better.”

via With MyLikes.com, Ex-Googlers Want to Build the Next AdSense – GigaOM.

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Tuesday, January 12, 2010

In his Twitter stream from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last weekend, actor-director LeVar Burton beamed a different kind of tweet to his 1.57 million followers:

“Be the 1st to own a NEW Sony bloggie camera RT for a chance to win #SonyCES http://bit.ly/6OccaR (ad).”

That message, which included a link to the electronics company’s Web site, was a paid advertisement arranged through one of several startups that have discovered pay-per-tweet as a way to cash in on the popularity of Twitter.

Advertisers like Sony, NBC Universal and Microsoft have lined up for campaigns that pay Twitter users a few dollars to $10,000 per tweet, depending on their number of followers or their sphere of influence.

“Twitter is the evolution of the Web page,” said Sean Rad, the 23-year-old chief executive of Ad.ly Inc., a Beverly Hills company that has gained publicity by bringing advertisers to celebrity tweeters such as Burton, model-actress Kim Kardashian, who has 2.7 million followers, and rapper Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em, who has 1.9 million followers.

“Content is shifting from static pages to the stream,” Rad said. “Everyone from CEOs to celebrities to random joes are all producing content. If there’s anything that Ad.ly has shown, it’s that the largest influencers on Twitter have an interest in being compensated for the value they’re creating for the ecosystem.”

San Francisco’s Twitter Inc., founded in 2006, has more than 60 million users worldwide and has become slightly profitable through income from search engine deals, although executives have said the firm may introduce some form of advertising this year.

But other firms aren’t waiting. In the past six months, companies like Ad.ly, Sponsored Tweets of Orlando and newcomer MyLikes of San Francisco have launched services to broker ad deals between Twitter users and sponsors. The tweets are supposed to be marked with notations such as “(ad)” or “#ad” to comply with new Federal Trade Commission guidelines governing advertisements or endorsements by bloggers, experts and celebrities.

MyLikes, founded by former Google executives Bindu Reddy and Arvind Sundararajan, emerged from beta mode last week with a roster of advertisers like 1-800-Flowers.com and about 30,000 Twitter users.

Sponsored Tweets

MyLikes campaigns pay Twitter to post up to one sponsored tweet per day. In return, they receive 20 cents to 80 cents for each click-through on ad links, depending on how MyLikes rates their influence or relevancy to the sponsor. Longtime Internet tech blogger Chris Pirillo, for example, earns about 74 cents per click from MyLikes, Reddy said.

The ads have caused a backlash in the blogosphere by those who say they pollute the Twitter stream. But Reddy said her company wants Twitter influencers to avoid alienating their audiences by being selective of sponsors and by writing their own ad copy.

“The voice of the influencers is what’s important,” she said. “There’s no incentive to writing a Viagra ad and sending it into a tech toys blog.”

Ad.ly and Sponsored Tweets pay Twitter users by the tweet but say the click-through rates are high. One recent Ad.ly campaign that started with 37 tweets generated 10,000 re-tweets in two days, said Rad, whose firm launched in September and is already cash-flow positive.

Small Firms Benefit

Kardashian has reportedly denied she is being paid $10,000 by sponsors to tweet, although her streams do include Ad.ly messages marked by “ad.”

Sponsored Tweets also counts Kardashian as one its Twitter producers. Still, Chief Executive Officer Ted Murphy said the biggest portion of his company’s business comes from smaller Web sites and services “that don’t have humongous marketing budgets and can’t afford to hire a PR firm, but can afford to spend a couple of hundred dollars to get their name out on Twitter. Someone with 100 followers can generate as many click-throughs as someone with 100,000 followers.”

Pirillo, the Seattle-based tech blogger who has 74,000 followers on Twitter, also had the same Sony ad in his stream. He has also rejected potential sponsors, but said he had no problem with Twitter influencers such as himself tweeting ads as long as they fully disclose what they are doing.

Although he noted no tweet was worth $10,000, Pirillo said he has earned about “four figures” in pay-per-tweet income so far.

“That helped get me through Christmas,” Pirillo said. “That helps pay the bills.”

E-mail Benny Evangelista at bevangelista@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page DC – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

via Startups cash in on Twitter with pay-per-tweet.

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www.openforum.com -Jan 09, 2010 -At yesterday’s CES show, I failed once again to meet Guy Kawasaki in person. The line around him was 6 deep, and I had appointments to go to.

But I did manage to catch most of his talk about how to kick butt on Twitter. And I was tweeting here and there. Soon, several of you following me on Twitter asked me to summarize some of his key points.

So here goes – 10 points that I picked out from the dozens Guy Kawasaki made in his talk:

1. The Tweetmeme button is the most powerful button the Internet today, if you run a blog or content site. It instantly shows that others have found value in an article or post. People see the number of tweets and think, “It must be good.” Second, the button makes it easy for people to retweet your article.
2. Make your tweets retweetable, by providing interesting stuff. “Retweeting is the sincerest form of flattery,” says Guy. “A person who retweets is saying I think what you said is interesting enough that I am risking my reputation to send it to other people.”
3. To find interesting stuff to tweet, subscribe to Smart Brief updates; Stumbleupon categories; and Alltop categories.
4. Get people to help you. Use ghost tweeters (i.e., ghost writers) to do outbound tweeting. Never use a ghost to respond to Direct Messages or “@ questions” people send you. Guy says there’s an 80% probability that he will respond to an “@ message” or a DM, except at 3 am PST.
5. Ignore the dogmatists who say Twitter is only about telling people about “me” – he calls it “meforming.” Guy says, “If you are Lance Armstrong tweeting ‘I have a flat tire,’ that’s interesting. You or me tweeting about a flat tire — not interesting. Do not do much ‘meforming.’”
6. Tweet everything on your blog. If you don’t think something is tweet-worthy, then why are you writing about it on your blog in the first place?
7. Repeat your tweets. According to Guy, “We repeat each tweet 4 times. Each time we tweet, something gets an average of 600 click-throughs regardless of how many times we tweet it. If we had stopped at one tweet, we would have limited the potential of that tweet to 600 visits, instead of 600 x 4 visits” to the site where the link leads. (Remember, many many site owners are getting the benefit of the visits from these multiple tweets, not necessarily Guy’s sites.) He went on to point out that mainstream media, such as CNN, repeats their news every hour because they know that people are not listening every minute of the day.
8. Be prepared for negative feedback — you WILL get someone saying something negative if you tweet.. No matter what you say, some people will disagree with you. If at any given moment, if you’re not upsetting someone on Twitter, you’re not using Twitter. Don’t let the .001% dictate using Twitter as a marketing tool. Mother Teresa would get negative feedback on Twitter. Use Twitter the way YOU want to use it.
9. Do not buy followers — most of those offers are scams. You should earn your tweets by tweeting out interesting stuff.
10. 10.  Should you tweet a sponsored message for money? Guy says, “It depends. If Reynolds Tobacco asked me to tweet that cigarettes don’t cause cancer — absolutely not. But if the manufacturer of a car I love, like Audi, asked me to, I don’t think I would turn it down. And I would disclose it as a sponsored tweet.”

For Guy’s slides please go here

Author: Anita Campbell
Editor and Founder, Small Business Trends

Anita Campbell is Editor and Founder of Small Business Trends, LLC, which manages online communities touching over 250,000 small business owners and managers each month.

via 10 Twitter Tips I Got from Guy Kawasaki at CES – Midwest AGNet – Your Source for Everything AG.

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January 11, 2010 02:51 PM ET

We all like to think we’re interesting. And on Twitter, that’s often measured and validated by how frequently other people retweet your posts. Maybe you’re looking to hear feedback on your recent blog post. Or you’ve found an interesting article or a funny YouTube video that you want to share with others. Aside from the instant ego boost that being retweeted provides (“Hey! They like me!), retweeting also helps you reach a greater portion of the Twittersphere than you’d be able to on your own.

Dan Zarrella, author of The Social Media Marketing Book, knows his Twitter stats. He’s combed through tens of thousands of tweets and compiled a report detailing his findings. Read on for his five tips to help you craft the kind of tweet that will get you noticed.

1. Time and day matter.

Zarrella’s research shows that to increase your chances of being retweeted, you should Tweet your links in afternoons, evenings and on weekends. More specifically, Friday yields the highest number of retweets, while retweeting occurs much more frequently from 3 p.m. to midnight.

2. Choose your words carefully.

Zarrella has found that the most retweetable word is “you.” “The word ‘you,’ while very common, seems to occur especially often in retweets, indicating that if you’re talking to ‘me,’ I am more likely to retweet it,” Zarrella says. The least retweetable words: game, going, haha, lol, but, watching, work, home, night and bed. “The lesson learned here is that if you’re trying to get more retweets, don’t just engage in idle chit-chat or tweet about mundane activities,” Zarrella suggests.

3. Include a link.

In a random sample of tweets, Zarrella found that about 19 percent included a link. Compare that to a sample of retweets, and the percentage almost triples–57 percent included links, suggesting that the presence of a link may increase a tweet’s chances of being shared.

4. Get friendly with bit.ly.

The most successful URL shortener, according to Zarrella’s research, is bit.ly, followed by ow.ly, most likely because they are newer and contain fewer characters, he says. The least retweetable URL shorteners are the older and longer tinyurl.com and twitpic.com.

5. Less is more.

“New data I’ve been working on seems to indicate that the more frequently you Tweet links, the fewer clicks you’ll get,” Zarrella says. If you tweet several times an hour, you decrease the likelihood of being retweeted. Keeping your tweets to one per hour will increase your chances of being retweeted.

Staff Writer Kristin Burnham covers consumer Web and social technologies for CIO.com. She writes frequently on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google. You can follow her on Twitter: @kmburnham.

via Twitter Tips: 5 Proven Ways to Get Retweeted.

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